The outside temperature was bitter cold and I didn't feel too bad, so I finally decided to head up to my shop and clean out snake alley. Overall things went OK, I might even say better than expected.
I felt like I was preparing to board the space shuttle, it took about fifteen minutes to get ready. I wore thermal socks, a pair of pants, a pair of ski pants over them, a shirt, a sweatshirt, insulated steel toe boots, then it's time to put on the abdominal brace, then a jacket, then another jacket, then a balaclava, then put on my hood, then my gloves, then the handwarmers inside the gloves, and then I am ready...to pee. So I peel everything off, pee and start all over again.
Working in the shop wasn't too bad. I actually had to unzip my jacket and switched from my balaclava to a hat. With the amount of snakeskins I found originally I had expected to find them throughout the area I was working in, but they were just at the front. It appears that it is just one rat bastard snake messing with me. Every year I try to make the area less and less hospitable for the serpents, but yet they still manage to sneak in. I think I finally found the place they are getting in at. So, between giving them less places to hang out, I hope that blocking the spot they come in at will really aggravate them enough that they decide to go somewhere else, maybe your house. I don't care as long as it isn't where I am.
The area I was cleaning up was what I refer to as the "Engine Room". Yes, I have some many spare motors that I have a room in my shop dedicated to them. Besides having a bunch of engines in this room, I also have all the trappings of my bachelor life. After being up there for ten years, I have come to the revelation that I am not going to use that stuff anytime soon, plus some of it is ruined, and when I get divorced, my nineteen year-old girlfriend(s) will probably want different stuff anyway. I had about ten of those plastic tote box thingys to go through. I had three piles: keep, donate, throw away. When I was done I had three boxes of keep, three of recycle, one donate, and about eight garbage bags of throw away. Yes, I will probably be sued by the garbage man tomorrow.
There were some pleasant surprises though. For some reason, anything I place in this part of my shop seems to mildew almost immediately. It's like a little Bermuda Triangle for mold. It doesn't really hurt the engines, because I coat them with Vaseline before they are stored (it's an old racers' trick). The only problem was when initially buying the family size economy five gallon bucket of Vaseline, explaining to my wife what my intentions for that much Vaseline were. When I opened up case after case, most of the stuff I cared about was mildew free! There were things I thought were going to be ruined that were just fine. There were other things that I thought I had lost, because I didn't remember putting them in these cases, that I found. And still other things that I had just plain forgot about. What I also found were more things to sell on ebay, things that I have already been selling well.
I finished just as it was getting dark outside. With help from the abdominal brace, I managed to make it through the whole ordeal with out any reinjury of my surgery, it was just every other part of my body that hurts. I don't know why it feels like I have been on a bike for five hours, when I didn't have a chance to sit down at all, but every single part of my body hurts. I came down to the house, very slowly and groaning, and jumped in the shower. As the hot water from the shower defrosted my blubber, I started to loosen up a little. The pains subsided just a bit, and I toweled off...that's is when I somehow managed to pull my incision. I don't know how I could do all the twisting, tugging, pulling, moaning, whining, and snake detesting without any problem, but the simple act of toweling off manage to hurt it. I guess I will just drip dry from now on.
So, I feel good that I finished a project that I have been wanting to do for a long time. I am glad I was able to rescue a few mementos of my bachelor life and clean out my engine room. I am hurting all over, but I think my incision isn't hurting as bad as it has in the past. Hopefully tomorrow the tightness and soreness of the rest of my body will mask the pain in my incision.
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